Windhaven is a science fiction fix-up novel by American writers George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle. The novel is a collection of three novellas compiled and first published together in 1981 by Timescape Books. It was published as a mass market paperback in 1982 by Pocket Books. Both editions featured cover art by Vincent Di Fate. It was later reprinted by Bantam Spectra in hardcover in 2001, and paperback in 2003 and 2012, with cover art by Stephen Youll. The novel was also published in paperback form in the UK by New English Library in 1982 and Gollancz in 1988.
Windhaven was nominated for a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1982, and finished in second place in that year's Locus Poll.
Writing process
Martin and Tuttle became friends in 1973, and soon decided to collaborate on a story, which became the first of the three novellas, The Storms of Windhaven (included in the novel as "Storms"). During the conception and writing of the story, they agreed on eventually expanding it into a fix-up novel. The Storms of Windhaven was originally published in the May 1975 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It won the 1976 Locus Award for Best Novella, and was nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novella and Nebula Award for Best Novella.
The two writers eventually returned to the world of Windhaven, and the second novella, One-Wing, was originally published in two parts in the January and February 1980 issues of Analog. It was nominated for a 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novella and won the Analog Readers Poll for best serial.
The third novella, The Fall, was written specifically for inclusion in the expanded novel, along with a prologue and epilogue.
Two more books were planned, with Painted Wings as the intended title of the second, but Martin and Tuttle never found the right time for additional collaboration, and as they grew older, their writing styles became more distinct, making cooperation more difficult.
Plot
Background
The novel recounts events which occur on the fictional planet Windhaven. Its inhabitants are the descendants of human space voyagers who crash-landed on Windhaven centuries before the events of the book take place. After the crash, the survivors spread out and settled on the many scattered islands of Windhaven's waterworld. In order to preserve tenuous lines of communication across the vast seas, the stranded population constructed mechanically simple gliding rigs from available spaceship wreckage; the gliders could be kept aloft almost indefinitely in Windhaven's stormy atmosphere by their pilots. After centuries of using this practice as the principal means of maintaining social contact among the islands, Windhaven's flyers have developed into a caste superior to the landsmen. Additionally, the flyer caste maintains ownership of the flying rigs — commonly known as "wings" — by keeping them within flyer families, so none of Windhaven's landsmen can aspire to ever wear them. These caste-based differences serve as the impetus for the novel's character-driven narrative.
Prologue
Maris is a young peasant girl who lives with her mother on the remote island Lesser Amberly. Her father, a fisherman, was killed an unspecified number of years before and Maris hardly remembers him. Though Maris and her mother survive mostly as scavenging "clam-diggers", they also collect refuse that washes onto the nearby beaches after violent coastal storms. Early one morning, Maris and her mother rise from bed and scour the beaches near their hovel for valuables after a particularly brutal tempest. Maris's search is largely fruitless and she recovers little. Afterward, however, she has a pivotal encounter with one of Windhaven's resident flyers.
Lesser Amberly itself is home to three flyers, one of whom, an adult male named Russ, lands on the shore near where Maris has concluded her search. Maris timidly approaches Russ and, during the chance meeting, he treats her with kindness and she, in turn, reveals to him that her most ardent wish is to become one of Windhaven's flyers.
